probably doesn't belong on goodreads, since "reading" does not describe what I'm doing with this book. I'm looking at the words, and gleaning, yes thaprobably doesn't belong on goodreads, since "reading" does not describe what I'm doing with this book. I'm looking at the words, and gleaning, yes that's it, gleaning what I can while trying to throw a program together. I know programming, but I don't know Java, so I'm actually trying to get through the book as quickly as possible. If that's what you need, then this book is perfect. It's very well laid out, dense, but clear. ...more

I got what I wanted out of this book for sure, plus a lot more that I didn't really care about.

The useful stuff you may learn (if you know this stuffI got what I wanted out of this book for sure, plus a lot more that I didn't really care about.

The useful stuff you may learn (if you know this stuff already, I would not recommend this beginners-level book)

1) The difference between a class and an ID2) How to use descendent selectors3) How to make use of inheritance to optimize CSS code4) How to calculate "specificity" which is what determines which style gets displayed in case of conflicting styles for the same element (the style with the greatest specificity wins). 5) How to use

s instead of s for page layout (and why this is so much more powerful)6) The intricacies of using floats for positioning of elements7) What the significance of the word "cascade" is in Cascading Style Sheets8) Some very basic idiot-proof decorating tricks and positioning tricks for page elements

The totally useless stuff you will wade through:

1) Endless IE-6 hacks to fix bugs.2) Redundancy! I know this book was written so that each chapter could stand on its own, but it's really really frustrating to read the same sentences over and over if you're reading from cover-to-cover.

This book will NOT make you into a web designer by any means, but by working through all the tutorials (which can be downloaded here: http://sawmac.com/css2e/) you will start to get some idea of what works -- and how easy it is to make a webpage that looks really nice with just a few lines of code. The book covers all the basics and gives you a flavor of CSS3 in the final chapter.

This book is fantastic. There are at least 400 pages-worth of information crammed into those 176 pages. This book is definitely not written with the bThis book is fantastic. There are at least 400 pages-worth of information crammed into those 176 pages. This book is definitely not written with the beginner programmer in mind. Even for an intermediate programmer such as myself, I often needed to read sentences three or four times in order to understand them. (Not because the writing was sloppy, but because of having to scour the depths of my brain to remember the meaning of terms like "lexical scope" and "prototypal inheritance").

I love this book for the same reason I love programming. Programming is an endeavor which demands exactitude. And one of the main problems that Crockford identifies with JavaScript is that it is much too forgiving of sloppiness, which can lead to errors or security risks. So the purpose of the book is to prove that if you peel away the Bad Parts of JavaScript, you reveal a shining core of Good JavaScript. Crockford teaches us how to avoid the pitfalls and write reliable, fast, and powerful code using the language of the Web which is, for better and worse, not going away any time soon.

One of the Best parts about the Good Parts is that they are all you need to write any program conceivable in JavaScript. Fortunate for us, and a testament to the fact that JavaScript is a totally legit language, the Bad Parts are avoidable, and not terribly hard to avoid either. Just a few more lines of code. And honestly, I've never been the type of programmer who sacrifices readability for density, so I'm happy to do a little extra work in order to build the most stable program possible. Crockford seems to agree. We are on a wavelength, I tell you.

So anyway. Read this book after you've gone through a few online tutorials on JavaScript, but don't wait too long after you've started coding, so that bad habits don't sneak in and solidify too much....more